I read an article recently about the death of WWI veteran William ‘Bill’ Stone who passed away Saturday 10 January 2009. Aged 108, he was one of the last remaining WWI veterans and he was the last British serviceman to have seen active duty in both world wars.

Within the news report was a reference to a website specifically for HMS Hood; so I took a look. I had an uncle who served on the ship and had some old postcards I had inherited from him.

There are no complete crew list records available and the association are calling on the public for help in compiling one.

I have sent them what details I can of my uncle and await their reply.

Tithes were the traditional method whereby a type of ‘tax’ was paid to the church in support of its clergy. The thithes were originally paid ‘in kind’, i.e. the tithe-payers gave up a tenth of their actual produce. This caused many problems and when attempts were made to change the tithes into a monetary payment system became confusing.

In 1836 the Tithe Community Act was passed to try and end this muddle and introduce a standardised monetary payment of tithes based on the value of the land and the current price of corn.

Nationwide landscape surveys were carried out and the results reproduced in the form of a Tithe Map. Accompanying each map was a legal document called an Apportionment that detailed the land ownership, use, size and the tithe rent charges.

The Tithe Map Project – West Sussex Record Office has a Tithe Map for almost every parish in the country. The maps, together with the Apportionments, are a valuable resource for many kinds of research. They are consulted by family and local historians, a wide age range of school and college students, undergraduates and academics. They are also used for house history, boundary, rights of way, hedgerow and archaeological site enquiries.

Because the maps are used so frequently the Record Office is running a Heritage Lottery funded Tithe Map Project to conserve and digitise our tithe maps. This will preserve the maps for generations and also make them more accessible to a wider range of people.

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We need your help…

Copies of the maps are currently available on CD, but it is also important for the information in the Apportionments to be available to look at in conjunction with the maps. It is our aim to involve local groups and individuals to assist in putting the Apportionments onto a data base from which copies can be printed.

For those who would like to become a volunteer and contribute to the project, it is an opportunity for you to learn about map conservation, receive training in palaeograaphic skills to be able to read old handwriting, develop computer skills and to learn more about the history of your local environment.